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Monday, 9 November 2009

Rushcliffe Country Park - Sun 8 Nov

Six of us made it out this morning and we caught about 35 birds. Perhaps the most interesting was a Goldfinch that was moulting strangely and which was the cause of much discussion.It had moulted its tail, tertials, secondaries, primaries 1 - 6 and the small alula feather. It also had some gold flecks in the red of the crown (which Gary has seen in adults). So the debate centred around whether it was an adult with arrested moult or an early hatched juvenile which had seized the opportunity to have an extensive moult. Unfortunately I don't have photos and I'm not sure what the final verdict was!